SF3c Atticus Lee Blanton

Atticus Lee Blanton was born in Fort Myers, Florida on Dec. 29, 1920. His father, Frank M. Blanton, worked in real estate. His mother, Annie Kennedy Blanton, was a homemaker.

The 1930 Census identified Annie as the head of a household of five children in Lady Lake in central Florida south-southwest of Jacksonville. The parents officially divorced in 1934.

Atticus, always known as Snooky, completed 9th grade by the time of the spring 1940 Census. He was a “new worker” who earned $98 for 46 weeks of work in 1939. His mother worked at home as a seamstress and an older brother was a fruit-packing-house employee. The three of them in total earned $898. The mother had another unidentified source of income, the Census said, to help support their household of four.

Snooky also served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program. The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families. He served at two camps — at Ocala, Florida, and at Gilroy, California.

Snooky enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 30, 1940, and by early December was serving on the U.S.S. Arizona. He was a shipfitter and petty officer third class when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

His mother died in 1972 at the age of 89. She arranged to have his Purple Heart embedded in the mausoleum at Lady Lake Cemetery, where she is interred.

An older brother, Marvin, served in the Merchant Marines in World War II.